Peyton-Jones says the U.K. workplace, shaped by generations
of men, is ill equipped to accommodate women, who “do things
differently and see things differently.”

“The glass ceiling exists because there’s not a way to
enmesh women in the professional world,” she says. “We don’t
know how to do it, and we also don’t know how to support women
so they can do it.”

Royal Opera

A dearth of female arts leaders became apparent last year
when the Royal Opera House searched for a new chief executive
officer. The Guardian, Daily Telegraph and London Evening
Standard listed potential contenders.

Only two were women: London Symphony Orchestra Managing
Director Kathryn McDowell; and Ruth Mackenzie, director of the
London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. The job went to Alex Beard,
deputy director of Tate.

English National Opera now seeks a chief executive after
Loretta Tomasi announced her year-end departure. The company --
which lost 2.2 million pounds ($3.43 million) in 2011-12 and is
still in the red -- needs a CEO with financial acumen, and will
advertise the job.

One woman with the right credentials: Sally O’Neill, the
Royal Opera House’s interim chief executive and finance
director.

At present, the Imperial War Museums are the only major
national museum group to be run by a woman. Diane Lees, 49,
IWM’s first female director general, is from an unrelated
background: She ran the Museum of Childhood, an East London
branch of the Victoria & Albert Museum dedicated to toys, dolls
and other childhood objects.

Mary Rose

National Theatre Director Nicholas Hytner, 57, steps down
in March 2015, when “it will be time to give someone else a
turn.” Hytner has been a vocal advocate of gender equality.

In a November lecture, he said it would take a decade or
two for the theater to be fully gender-balanced and reflective
of audiences. In 2007, he described U.K. theater critics as
“dead white men” who were biased against women directors.

Tate Director Nicholas Serota, 67, has no fixed retirement
plans. The term of British Museum Director Neil MacGregor, 67,
expired in 2012, and he is currently on a rolling contract, with
no set departure date.

The debate over women in the workplace has flared up in the
U.K. with the publication of “Lean In,” in which Facebook Inc.
Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg urges women not to let
self-doubt or motherhood hamper their careers.

Sandberg Sarcasm

In her book, Sandberg writes that women leaders have
historically faced sarcasm. U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was nicknamed “Attila the Hen,” Indian Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi was referred to as “the old witch,” and German
Chancellor Angela Merkel is “the iron frau.”

For Peyton-Jones, too, authority came at a price.

“I would be called ‘head girl’ or ‘head teacher’ in a way
that for a man would never be said, because that would be a man
being assertive,” she says. “It wouldn’t matter if it was
Genghis Khan.”

Southbank Centre Artistic Director Jude Kelly -- in the job
since 2005 -- confirms that her profession is behind the times.
“You’d expect the arts to have a different, liberal relationship
to gender, but they don’t,” she says.

Even when it comes to works of art, “the story is that the
central genius, the visionary leader is a man.” The woman is
“slightly in the background, whether you’re talking about
composers’ wives or artists’ muses or whatever.”

Female Vision

As for U.K. arts institutions, they’re full of women in
“facilitating” roles -- administrators, curators, producers.
“There’s a question about whether women can have a vision, be a
visionary leader who can drive an entire workforce,” she says.

So women hold back. A 43-year-old arts professional on a
leadership course told Kelly she was applying for a job as
assistant director because she wasn’t “ready” for the top job.

“You have to get girls and women to think big and then to
have the courage to see it through,” Kelly concludes.

At the London Symphony Orchestra, McDowell -- appointed in
2005 -- recalls that the orchestra was all-male until the 1970s,
then became “whole-hearted” in its drive toward gender equality.
LSO now includes many women players, a quality its late music
director Colin Davis appreciated.

Culture Balance

“He felt that it brought a balance into the whole working
culture,” says McDowell, “and also changed the sound of the
orchestra.”

Like her peers, McDowell would like to see fewer men
steering U.K. arts. “I hope that more and more women will put
themselves forward for senior roles, because they have the
skills and attributes to do the job well,” she says.

As the orchestra’s manager, McDowell is noticing positive
shifts: The challenges of childcare and work-life balance are
faced by players of both sexes. “Within many young families now,
there’s a sense that it may be the male who may be carrying some
or a lot of that load,” she says.

Over time, with gender roles less and less defined, culture
will become less male-run, says McDowell.

“As the changes to the chief executive and managing
director roles come through over the next 10 to 20 years,” she
concludes, “I would like to think that many more appointments
will be made, and many more women will be putting themselves
forward.”

(Farah Nayeri writes for Muse, the arts and culture section
of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)